1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing method for a dot printer in which printing is performed while causing a printing head to move in a direction perpendicular to the feeding direction of a recording medium.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, in order to improve the resolution (increase the density of dots) in a dot printer for forming characters or the like with a dot matrix, the following device has been proposed. That is, generally, a method is used in which printing elements such as printing wires, printing electrodes, or the like, are arranged in two columns in a staggered or zigzaged relation. This method, however, is disadvantageous due to the complexity in construction, the increase in the number of constituent components, the increase in the size of the printing head, the increase in the cost of production, etc. In this respect, another method has been proposed in which high resolution printing is performed with a longitudinally arranged single columnsrow of printing elements as conventionally used. In this method, one of a recording medium and a printing head is moved relative to the other by a half pitch in the direction of a column (longitudinal direction) to thereby form dots also in the intermediate portion. This method, however, has a disadvantage that the actual printing speed is reduced by the fact that the operation to accurately move the recording medium or the printing head in the direction of the column by a half pitch is inserted in the midway of one line printing operation.